PolitiFact: A Truth Index Video!

Adieu to Adair: A Parody

Or:  Getting It Right with the White Knight

Recently it was announced that Bill Adair would be leaving PolitiFact to be a "Knight Professor":

This summer we say goodbye to Bill Adair, founding editor of PolitiFact.

Adair, who helped create the Tampa Bay Times' prize-winning fact-checking site, will join Duke University as the Knight Professor of the Practice of Journalism and Public Policy, Times Editor Neil Brown announced Thursday. .

A national search for the next PolitiFact editor will begin soon, Brown said. Adair will continue a relationship with PolitiFact as a contributing editor.

I will miss Mr. Adair as he was very nice to me.  He featured my blog once in a PolitiFact article and sent me an e-mail letting me know he actually read it on occasion.  I hope all my data and charts didn't make him too dizzy.  I believe he worked very hard to make PolitiFact an objective fact-checker, even with all the nay-sayers.

 

On the light side, we certainly have a "White Knight" to replace Adair: Who better than my conservative counterpart, Bryan White! He really needs to apply for Adair's job, if he hasn't already done so! He has a journalism background/education, is already doing fact-checks, as well as a multitude of meta-fact-checks. Who better to understand the needs of the PolitiFact brand that someone who has been trolling its fact-checks and its Facebook page since 2008!

In fact, here's the un-cut, unedited list of things he might do as PolitiFact's chief editor:

(1) Have a little "cardboard Obama effigy" fire event to represent starting anew, to emphasize who should have really received ALL the Pants on Fire awards. It will be replaced with a giant framed official portrait of Ronald Reagan. It's like replacing Satan with Jesus!

Burn that Obama cut-out down!
His presidential pants are on fire now!

(2) Fire release Louis Jacobson, so he can move onto better things and blacklist him. After all, he was hired over White, and that's only fair considering that (IMO) no one would want his shoddy work, and his extreme bias must be prevented from infecting other news organizations.

(3) Offer Erick Erickson, one of the most unbiased right-wing journalists of the internet, the opportunity a huge salary increase and bonus to come down to Tampa to replace Jacobson. If he is unavailable, PolitiFact Bias co-founder and brilliant, prolific blogger (of "BewzNewzandVewz") Jeff Dyberg will be offered the position. Also make Tom Kertscher (of PolitiFact Wisconsin) a PolitiFact National Associate editor second to White, since he was the only writer who did truly fair fact-checks favoring Republicans.

 

(4) Eliminate certain PolitiFact states for cost saving/productivity improvements for favoring Democrats. Consolidate Miami (PolitiFact Florida) to Tampa (and demote the very biased Angie Drobnic-Holan to researcher status), plus shut down New Hampshire, Oregon and Rhode Island because their low output is not cost effective they have too many Democrats and are too liberal. Put PolitiFact Ohio on warning that their franchise will be terminated unless they substantially improve their performance Republican Truth Index to exceed the Democrats. Preferable PolitiFact states which should exemplify fairness and truthfulness in reporting would include but are not limited to: Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Louisiana and South Carolina.

 

(5) Institute a PolitiFact across-the-board policy in which any ruling will go through White for final approval.    In order to eliminate selection bias, White will select all statements as well.  It will totally eliminate selection bias by replacing it with selection bias favoring Republicans.

 

(6) Erick Erickson (or Jeff Dyberg, if he is available) will be responsible for enforcing instilling within PolitiFact the very best journalistic methodology as practiced by both he and Bryan: There may be instances where one party Republicans would have significant underlying arguments that make most of their statements true, or their statement at face value, if true, is to be ruled on at face value. Or that party Democrat might have statements that should have significant underlying arguments that make their statements false (unless the statement at face value is false). Since White and Erickson (and Dyberg) want only Politi-FACTS fact-checks favoring Republicans and denigrating Democrats, not opinion.

 

(7) If Jeff Dyberg is hired, require force on threat of their job that all PolitiFact project employees to read and carry a copy of inspirational readings/expressions to assist in their journalistic efforts Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged.

 

(8) "Lie of the Year" will be eliminated. Instead a vote will be conducted from the "Most Honest Republican Person of the Month" (see final point Number 11--"Most Honest Republican Person of the Month" replaces Pants on Fire). And instead of the vote being indiscriminately over-ridden by the PolitiFact management for its own choice, our "Most Honest Person of the Year" will be the voters' choice of the 12 "Most Honest Republican Person(s) of the Month", which will be a much more popular, fair option.

 

(9) To further PolitiFact's popularity and its new fair and balanced approach to fact-checking, it will be regularly featured on cable network news shows Fox News and the Blaze.

 

(10) And a message to Bill Adair in his new role: we don't need your stinkin' editorial contributions! Just joking!  We will certainly take a look at them flush them down the toilet.

(11) MOST IMPORTANT: The Truth-o-Meter category Pants on Fire, due to its inherently subjective determination as uncovered in White's impartial, fair-minded and unbiased studies , will be eliminated. An exhaustive review will be performed on the Pants on Fire already awarded to determine their legitimacy so that those claims indiscriminately awarded to Republicans can be removed with Democrat Pants on Fire kept in, since Democrats are much bigger liars than Republicans.

 

Instead, there will be a renewed emphasis on telling the truth which Republicans, like Bryan White, as everyone knows, have a monopoly on, as opposed to egregious lying. So a "Most Honest Republican Person of the Month" (also see Number 8) will be featured for being honest, forthright and adhering to the best of patriotic and conservative principles.

 

This should assure that PolitiFact becomes a much improved, unbiased publication that readers can enjoy without the defects of "Pants on Fire" or the flawed, logical-fallacy riddled and liberally biased fact-checks of some of its former writers. This should greatly balance and increase the readership base. Another Pulitzer prize here we come!

2012 in Review at PolitiFact (Continued)

A few items have been posted already about the year 2012 at PolitiFact (PF).  It was their biggest year because of the presidential election, with 1,961 rulings produced.    Here's how it looked for all Truth-o-Meter categories as a percentage, in 2012:

Click to enlarge

In terms of Republicans versus Democrats, Democrats had a 2012 Truth Index+ of 58.5 (-3.7 PF Truth Index) for 735 rulings, while the Republicans had a 49.8 (-25.6 PF Truth Index) for 1,078 rulings.  That means that for the statements fact-checked by PolitiFact, the Democrats' rulings averaged about 17.5 percent higher (in proportional terms of Truth Index+).

Click to enlarge:  Truth Index+ for party is in parentheses

We've looked at month-to-month already, and took at a better look at Pants on Fire.  Let's take a look at the top ten "rulees"--those who were fact-checked.  This may explain to some degree why more Republicans are checked than Democrats.  While Obama was the person most fact-checked, he was the only Democrat on the top ten list.  Outside of people, only chain e-mails had enough rulings to get to the top ten.  The PolitiFact states showed their contributive power, with Chris Christie (PolitiFact New Jersey), Rick Scott (PolitiFact Florida), and Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson (PolitiFact Wisconsin) making it to the list.  Other than that, there were the expected presidential candidates (Vice president Joe Biden was Number 13 with 14 fact-checks).  The top ten shown reflects about 25 percent of all rulings; it should also be noted that of the 760 individuals/organizations "politi-facted" in 2012, 500 of them only received a single ruling (also about 25 percent of the rulings).  This shows how PolitiFact concentrates its efforts.

Click to enlarge:  Chain e-mails have always had one of the lowest Truth Indexes (highlighted).

In terms of topic, there is some overlap, that is, PolitiFact assigns multiple subjects by the nature of the fact-check, so these aren't quite as straightforward.  Generally, this is the "first" subject assigned in the fact-check, although it can be a subjective selection.  Occasionally it may be changed if I feel it's not correct, but that is rare.  Nevertheless, here are the top ten subjects which cover about 57 percent of all the rulings.  There's actually 11 because Deficits and Abortion tied for tenth place with 56 rulings each.

Click to enlarge:  Healthcare had lowest Truth Index because of high number of False and
Pants on Fire Obamacare claims (highlighted)

As far as separating Democrats from Republicans in other categories, I may be doing that as the year progresses, but more likely in terms of all rulings as PolitiFact quickly approaches 7,000.  Hold that dial.

 

I Brake for Pants on Fire (in 2013)

Since its debut in 2007 through the end of 2012, the PolitiFact team (including its states) decided that 1,915 statements it fact-checked out of the 6,658 total it had done deserved a false.  And of these statements found false, 29.6 percent, or 566, were deserving of its now famous Pants on Fire designation.  While I'm not going to discuss the somewhat subjective exercise of how it's assigned, it may be worth unpacking it and seeing what's inside.

 

If those 566 Pants on Fire rulings, 137 or 24% went to Democrats, 369 or 65% went to Republicans; the rest (60) were non-partisan or unknown as to a party affiliation.  This is what "alarms" to some degree the PolitiFact detractors who are mostly Republican: on a "raw" ruling basis, Republicans (in general) were 2.71 times more likely to be assigned the Pants on Fire than the Democrats.    The Republican theories as to the reason for this have been sampling or selection bias, although there are other compelling ones which I've posted about before:  the loss of the Whitehouse in 2008, and the enacting of "Obamacare."

 

One particular categorizing that was first done by the University of Minnesota's Eric Ostermeier in a study of 511 PolitiFact rulings in 2010 was "official versus non-official"; it took into account those who were in office.  Only 190, or about one third, of the Pants on Fire rulings were awarded to people who were in office; of the other 376 who were not in office, half were organizations and the on-line media.  If we look at party affiliation of those in office who were assigned the Pants on Fire, we have 60 Democrats (32 percent) and 128 Republicans (67 percent).  This means Republicans in office were 2.1 times more likely to be awarded the Pants on Fire than were Democrats in office, still more than double but about 25 percent less than the 2.71 overall.

 

The media--which includes celebrities, pundits, blogs, websites and chain e-mails--received the largest percentage (24%) of Pants on Fire claims, followed by governors and state government officials (19%).

 

Sixty-eight rulings receiving the Pants on Fire related to Obamacare, the vast majority from Republicans.  Claims on the subject of healthcare generated the most Pants on Fire rulings, with over 80 percent of them about Obamacare, or 14 percent of the Pants on Fire claims.   Obamacare overlapped to the subjects of Medicare, housing and abortion as well.  As a general topic, however, fiscal subjects (deficit, economy, federal/state budgets, stimulus and taxes) took up about 20 percent of the Pants on Fire claims.

 

As the number of fact-checks has grown year to year, however, the percentage of Pants on Fire claims in terms of the total has been gradually dropping year to year since "peaking" in 2009 as shown here.

Click to enlarge:  Number of rulings shown in parentheses after year

Finally, below are the same numbers which show the Republican/Democrat breakdown each year. What this appears to show is that while the percentage of Pants on Fire overall has gone down, the percentage of those Pants on Fire assigned to Republicans has gone up.  Non-official candidates--which include Mitt Romney and the other Republican presidential candidates like Herman Cain and Rick Santorum--comprise the third highest category in terms of candidate occupation for Pants on Fire rulings, which may have contributed to this high percentage in 2011 and 2012.  So, we may see a drop in this high Republican percentage in 2013.  Stay tuned.

Click to enlarge: Years (2010-12) of most Pants on Fire were dominated by Republicans

 

Liberal Proof of PolitiFact (Liberal) Bias: A Summary Thus Far

A better standard is needed for me to say something at PolitiFact (PF) looks like "liberal" bias than for me to be a Republican and just not like what they say like many of its detractors.   Or to pick something out of selected rulings that I think is "bad journalism" when it's just my opinion.  Let's review what I've come across so far that I have assigned to "Liberal Proof of PolitiFact Liberal Bias" because I honestly have to admit there isn't much way around explaining it otherwise:

(1)   Yes, there is some inconsistency on the application of tax rates in the rulings, especially what exactly an "effective tax rate" should consist of, as noted in this recent post.   A ruling from PF Ohio and one from PF Rhode Island are particularly suspect for not being as thorough as they could have been and as a result appearing to  jack up the Truth-o-Meter for Democrats.

(2)  The PolitiFact National writers do seem to assign a lot more Pants on Fire to Republicans than their stateside counterparts (as well as produce rulings which make the Republicans look less truthful overall), with two exceptions.

(3) The Republican Party of Virginia was correct in one part of their over-the-top study of PolitiFact Virginia this past July:  it did appear to "dump" positive Republican rulings in the weekend Richmond Times Dispatch; however, they may be wrong assuming most people only read the news on weekdays.

(4) For the first three months of 2012, a weekly trend analysis of the Democrat and Republican Truth Index  appeared to indicate that at the end of the month, ratings would "even up."  I haven't done any analysis since, but have it set up in my data to do it for the year 2012.  What this means--those with a conspiracy mindset might think this was a deliberate attempt by PolitiFact to periodically even up the Truth-o-Meter (or the Truth Index) between parties.  I'm not sure what it means, and it might not occur again.

(5) Pat Boone's advertisement about Obamacare's IPAB rationing care got doubled up in Pants on Fire from two relatively-leaning-left-based-on-Truth-Index writers, but when a Georgia congress person made a very similar statement calling the rationing "the power to deny care to seniors" it received a Half True from PF Georgia.

(6)  In my version of what was to become my conservative counterpart's Pants on Fire factor, a measure of how much "more" Republicans are assigned Pants on Fire rulings, I looked at the Pants on Fire for PolitiFact's first 5,000 rulings and then proportioned them to the percentage of rulings overall.  The Republicans had 2.5 times as many Pants on Fire as Democrats, not considering the percentages.

7)  I also looked at the Truth Index in terms of writers,  by occupation (officials versus PACs, etc.) and by what I judged to be "local" rulings, for the year 2011, with varying results, although for the most part, they would predominantly favor the Democrats.  The one exception I found for what I judged to be "local" rulings, done for the first time in the final quarter of 2011,  was totally reversed in the first quarter of 2012.

8)  PolitiFact's most egregious problem may be "cookie cutter" rulings, where rulings are duplicated and serve to amplify the Truth Index negatively,  although the claimant often goes without political affiliation even though it's obvious what that affiliation probably is.    A major one this year was the across-the-board claim by "bloggers" that all the Democrats in congress were card-carrying socialists,  where almost all the PF states with a Democrat Congress member accused of "carrying the card" decided to jump on board and basically copy/paste the same ruling, inflicting a lot of Pants on Fire on those bloggers who had to be Republicans.  It could also be a subject as seemingly innocuous as light bulbs, a popular one in mid-2011.    Now it's been turned on its head a bit with the doubled up-assignment of "True" to a Democrat. 

Now, there's a few rulings of the same genre where PolitiFact has not been kind to the Democrats, and an excellent case of what could be termed Republican bias by PolitiFact Wisconsin.  And it would not take a lot of analyses to refute a few of my findings.  It just needs to be neatly summarized and put out there.

 

 

Lil White Lies: Double Bain Dead

A post at Sublime Bloviations says this PolitiFact fact-check is ”a joke” and not relevant, and its "inflammatory" partner anti-factchecker blog counterirritant chimes along, adding Limbaugh “didn’t try to make [the] argument” to support PolitiFact’s ruling of Pants on Fire.

Let’s start by taking a look at what Limbaugh initially said, from the PolitiFact ruling:

"This evil villain in the new Batman movie is named Bane. And there's now a discussion out there as to whether or not this is purposeful and whether or not it will influence voters. It's gonna have a lot of people. This movie, the audience is gonna be huge. A lot of people are gonna see the movie, and it's a lot of brain-dead people, entertainment, the pop culture crowd, and they're gonna hear Bane in the movie and they're gonna associate Bain. The thought is that when they start paying attention to the campaign later in the year, and Obama and the Democrats keep talking about Bain, Romney and Bain, that these people will think back to the Batman movie, ‘Oh, yeah, I know who that is.’ There are some people who think it'll work. Others think you're really underestimating the American people to think that will work."

He wrapped up:

"You may think it's ridiculous, I'm just telling you this is the kind of stuff the Obama team is lining up. The kind of people who would draw this comparison are the kind of people that they are campaigning to. These are the kind of people that they are attempting to appeal to."

But wait, there’s more! The implication from Sublime Bloviations' Bryan White was that since Limbaugh could not be taken seriously, it was not worth fact-checking (even though even PolitiFact admitted it was a  “pop culture diversion" ). But it gets seriously expanded the following day, as scripted at the Rush Limbaugh website, and serves to further contradict counterirritant’s claims:

So I'm in the library last night, and I'm doing what I always do. I'm doing show prep. And I get a text message from Kathryn who's in with the dogs in the kitchen. She says, "Are you in this Batman movie and you didn't tell me? Is this Batman movie about you?" I said, "What now?" She says, "I can't go anywhere without reading about you and this Batman movie." And I finally, in that moment, folks, I finally figured out what's going on. I outed them. Forget the creator. I don't care that the creator created the character Bane in the Batman movie back in the '90s. It doesn't matter. The Democrats clearly were going to try to link this villain to Mitt Romney. And I outed 'em. They've even got a couple Democrats admitting they were gonna, Chris Leheinous and Jon Stewart. And they're still trying to do it.

You know, independently of the producers and the actors and all the people associated with the movie, they saw it, they were gonna try to make the linkage, and now I'm out there basically accusing them of that, so they've got their backs up. They're acting like I'm some sort of conspiracy creep. But I outed 'em. I have shined the light of truth, as it were.

Counterirritant says Limbaugh never advanced the idea “ that the villain Bane was named in reference to Bain Capital.” Yes he did—he advanced it by being the first one to say “there was a discussion out there whether or not this was purposeful” and associating Bane to Bain and the Democrats in the next few sentences. In other words, if he didn’t advance the idea, what was it then that Limbaugh was “outing” the Democrats for? What precisely was that “light of truth”? Counterirritant debates like White, in that he tries to ignore the obvious.

So, the next issue becomes whether PolitiFact should rightfully consider Limbaugh's claims "a joke."  In 2008, Limbaugh was thought to have “caused mischief” in the Democratic primaries. According to one article, the Indiana primary “may be the first vote in which his influence [was] measured in qualitative terms.” He called it “Operation Chaos.” And more recently, his calling Sandra Fluke a “slut” was taken so seriously, many of his sponsors dropped him.

Truth Index: Don't Rush Me

After publishing the first half PolitiFact (PF) ruling results, it’s come time for more breakdown of the detail, and as I accomplished that I came across an “amusing” error I had made: I accidentally classified Rush Limbaugh as a Democrat! Oh woes me! So that’s been fixed. He only had one Pants on Fire ruling for the first half of 2012, but it did slightly affect the Truth Index.

Here’s how it breaks down by “source”—starting with the President/VP, the congress, the governors, the states and local governments, as well as advocacy groups, PACs and the media, and includes the overall Truth Index (here's the one for first quarter of 2012). “Others” includes former officials, blogs, chain e-mails and websites. A new category has been added called “Candidates (other than President)” as we have more and more of them due to the beginning of the 2012 election campaign. All officials I’ve categorized are “sitting”: in the case of presidential (I’d say ex-presidential but I don’t want to incur the wrath of Ron Paul fans) candidates like Ron Paul and Rick Perry, they are included in the categories of their “sitting” positions, congressman and governor.

Click to enlarge:  Groups (PACs etc) have a far lower Truth Index (-43) than individuals (-12) .

The following is a further breakdown of the pie chart, showing Democrats and Republicans. As can be seen the “local” category is now almost exactly even between Democrats and Republicans, whereas for the first quarter I showed a Republican advantage. The difference in the “local” Truth Index you’ve seen in earlier posts (as far as number of rulings) is that the chart indicates local politicians only, but there are also local issues covered by almost every source category which was what my earlier posts were about.

Click to enlarge:  FIRST HALF 2012: Only 3 rulings on Democrat governors made for the lowest Truth Index.

The senators and governors having more positive rulings than the other positions seems to be holding. The senators’ longer terms and their proverbial meaning of being “the eldest and wisest” (although let’s remember the word senator is from the same root as “senile” ha ha!) may have something to do with their being more “truthier” when subjected to the Truth-o-Meter. I posted something earlier on the predominantly Republican governors as far as who was the lowest on the Truth Index (Scott Walker of Wisconsin) but relatively speaking as a group they are much more “truthier” than their political counterparts.  

Next up, PolitiFact states or maybe PolitiFact writers?

Sidebar: Another Reason for More Republican Fact-checking

(...And Why I don’t believe in the “Liberal Media”)

Since I’ve started tracking PolitiFact’s Truth-o-Meter rulings, I’ve generally described an ongoing higher percentage of Republicans fact-checked as compared to Democrats. For example, when PolitiFact hit Ruling Number 5,000 this February, it was determined just over 53% of the 5,000 rulings were on Republicans /Conservatives, while only 39% were attributable to Democrats/Liberals. For the first quarter of 2012, it’s been even higher with almost 61% Republicans /Conservatives’ statements checked versus 34% Democrats/Liberals.

A recent article by David Ferguson of “The Raw Story” reports the results of a study (by media watchdog group FAIR, Fairness and Accuracy in Media and Reporting) on “guests featured in one-on-one interviews and roundtable discussions on the four main Sunday morning talk shows.” This is often where PolitiFact finds its “selections” of “facts” to investigate. And lo and behold, which party tends to dominate this format, which might very well explain the larger number?

…[The breakdown of guests were from] the four main Sunday morning talk shows, ABC’s “This Week,” NBC’s “Meet the Press,” CBS’s “Face the Nation” and “Fox News Sunday” from June 2011 to March 2012. The results skewed heavily Republican, white and male, with only token representation by blacks and Latinos, and virtually no appearances by guests outside of one of the two national political parties.

Extra! points to November 6 of 2011 as typical of the ideological breakdown of the Sunday shows. CBS’s Bob Schieffer welcomed “a cross section of Republicans” to discuss the issues facing the primary that week. On ABC’s “This Week,” lone liberal Arianna Huffington was featured alongside conservatives Matthew Dowd, George Will and Niall Ferguson. “Meet the Press” featured Republican operative Alex Castellanos with Wall Street Journal conservative scribe Kimberly Strassel alongside a pair of middle-of-the-road Beltway journalists.

The study showed that one-on-one interviews with policy makers and other national figures, which are the ratings bread and butter of the talk shows, featured 166 Republicans to Democrats’ 70. Roundtable discussions welcomed 189 Republican guests and 109 Democrats.

It’s worth noting, also, that the liberals typically presented on these programs are mostly centrists with very few out-and-out progressives, leading FAIR to quip that “corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists.”

The increase in Republican coverage in 2011-12 seems to have a similar explanation to mine for increased fact-checking of Republicans:

It could be argued that during this period the nation has been in the throes of a long and competitive Republican primary race, hence the heavy percentages of Republicans and right wing operatives. A similar study done by the group Media Matters during the 2004 Democratic primary race still found 56 percent of the guests chosen for the Sunday morning shows were Republicans to 44 percent Democrats.

So it appears what’s needed is an off-election-year study to make a comparison. In the meantime what this all brings to mind for me is when certain conservatives I know speak of the “Obama News Network” or that perennial favorite the “lame stream media.” Which is to say, this is just one more of the many facts that doesn’t seem to fit their narrative.

Truth Index: 2012 First Quarter

For the first three months of 2012, PolitiFact labored to produce 516 Truth-o-Meter rulings.  This brings the grand total number of rulings, since PolitiFact began, up to 5,223 as of March 31 (with the milestone 5,000 passed in the latter half of February).  Since I started tracking the Truth-o-Meter ruling by ruling beginning in 2011, this is the highest number of PolitiFact rulings done in one quarter.  The last time 500 was exceeded was in the second quarter of 2011.   The addition of PolitiFact Tennessee and the work of PolitiFact New Hampshire supplementing PolitiFact National helped put them over 500.

 The Truth Index for all the rulings has changed very little from the overall Truth Index rating at the end of 2011, of negative 13.3; it's gone up microscopically to a negative 13.2, and indicates a very flat trend line up (sort of like the downward trend of national unemployment, ha ha).  Here is how the distribution of the rulings by party broke down: 

This breakdown has improved somewhat since the end of 2011 when fact-checks on Republicans reached a heady 67 percent while only 24 percent were on Democrats and Liberals in December.  Compared to overall, however, there has still been more emphasis on Republican fact-checks (overall for Republicans it's about 53 percent and for Democrats, 39 percent).  The obvious explanation, of course, is the coverage of the Republican primary candidates as well as the domination of Republican governors/governments in the states.

Click to enlarge.

The Truth Index "Report Cards" for the quarter (above) show the Republicans held steady, moving up a point at a negative 22 while the Democrats improved very slightly from about a positive 1 to just over 5.  As a point of reference, the Republicans' score shows a very average spread of Truth-o-Meter rulings (one in each category) while the Democrats, at a score close to zero, are slightly better than average, as if they were spread equally across all categories except Pants on Fire.

Next up is a new and improved feature:  instead of a month to month Truth Index, it will be week to week for the first quarter...although it doesn't tell you much.

Truth Index: All Politics "R" Local

What is termed “local” deals with the nature of the PolitiFact (PF) ruling. Most often it would show in the title or subtitle. It means it just relates to something having to do with the state or locality, that it’s not national. It could be ideological, but it still pertains to a local issue. None of these rulings were from PolitiFact National. Intuitively they wouldn’t, but state PolitiFact rulings can be done for an office holder of that (PolitiFact) state, while the subject of the fact-check is of national scope. In other words, without reviewing each ruling, the state rulings can't all be counted as local.

For that reason, the rulings here only reflect the final quarter of 2011 because that is when I decided to start keeping track of the ruling itself along with whether it was “local.” I will continue doing this in 2012 to see if  trends continue.

There’s also an “overlap” which required these rulings be separately charted. Many of them are in the source or occupation category “office holders.” A good example is a statement by Rick Perry (office holder) made on Fox News in December, that “… Texas did not bail out a loan program he oversaw as state agriculture commissioner”:

Neil Cavuto of Fox News initially noted that noted that Perry wants Congress to stop spending so much. Then, referring to Austin American-Statesman reporting, Cavuto said the Texas program "had so many defaults that the state had to stop guaranteeing bank loans to start-ups in the agribusiness and eventually bailed out the program with the taxpayer money. So aren't you guilty of the same behavior you rail against as a presidential candidate?" Cavuto asked.

Perry replied: "Number one, don't believe everything you read in the Austin American-Statesman. And the second side of it is, we had that program put in place, and the state did not bail (it) out; those programs worked as they were supposed to work. Just like in any bank or any business, you are going to have some that fail."

At first blush this sounds like the subject could be the federal budget. It really has to do with what Perry did when he was the Texas Agricultural Commissioner in the 1990’s. Since the fact-check has to do specifically with Texas, Perry’s claim was counted as a local one.

Even though my example was a Republican with “Pants on Fire” it appears that locally, Republicans are more truthful than Democrats….by a pretty good margin. Republicans were at a precise “zero” on the Truth Index, while the Democrats were a negative 27. There were 173 “local” rulings which represented 38% of all the PF rulings in the fourth quarter of 2011; Democrats and Republicans were also equally represented, each having 74 rulings. There were 25 rulings for which the affiliation was independent, non-partisan or just unknown.

Click to enlarge:  Truth Index is in parentheses next to label.  Republicans were 27 points higher than Democrats locally.

Thirty percent of Democrat rulings were False or Pants on Fire, while only 18 percent of Republican rulings were in these categories. On the truthful side, almost 40% of Republican statements were found to be True or Mostly True, while only about 27% of Democrat statements were found to be the same.

Truth Index: Occupying the PolitiFact Truth-o-Meter

In 2011 I came across the website of Steve’s Quibbling Potatoes, and I have to admit he gave me some good ideas about further finessing my database of PolitiFact (PF) rulings. So Steve, if you’re reading this, I’m sorry I stole them! But you haven’t done anything on PF stats since July! In the last quarter of 2011, I started keeping an ongoing track (the way Steve does) of what he called the “occupation” of the statement-makers. Instead of just office holders, non-office holders, groups and media, he further defined it in terms of party boosters, advocacy groups, activists, etc. He also looked at state and local politics separately from “national” politics in Truth Index terms, to see if there was any difference in the averages and any insights could be gained.

As the 2012 presidential election approaches, another “group” is starting to be fact-checked that wasn’t part of Steve’s categorization, that he may have included under party boosters or advocacy groups if he had them. That’s the PAC – Political Action Committee – which I thought might be interesting to segregate out, especially in 2012.

Party boosters can best be described as groups whose purpose is to support the party. They’re pretty easy to distinguish because they have Republican or Democrat in their name. The 2011 PolitiFact Lie of the Year originated with the party booster DCCC – the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (well, it actually originated with the Wall Street Journal, but I won’t go there for now). It was fairly easy for me to go back through the previous rulings and find these, so I can show numbers on these for the entire year of 2011.

Advocacy groups and advocates (I’m including activist with advocates) are those whose sole purpose is (to advocate for) a “cause”—everything from “Critics of Florida Fluoridation” (public water supply in Florida) to the National Taxpayers’ Union (U.S. taxes). Of course, there may be some conflicts with the PAC’s, because PACs can support causes as well. Some of the groups are clearly non-profits or foundations and may run ads similarly to PAC and have PAC offshoots. I am trying to confine the PACs to those whose function is very clearly to garner contributions in order “to elect political candidates or to advance the outcome of a political issue or legislation.” It is difficult to tell sometimes; a patriotic-sounding name isn’t the only indicator. Usually, the PolitiFact ruling will note that it’s a PAC, but not always. I was able to include these for the entire year as well.

My last review of “occupation” categories was: office holders, non-office holders, groups, individuals and media.  This time the non-office holders will be further delineated into party boosters, advocacy groups, PACs, media and whatever’s left that can’t be included in those four. That would be such things as websites, bloggers, yard signs, Facebook posts, and those ubiquitous chain e-mails.

Click to enlarge: Maybe PF has a soft spot in their heart for liberal media people?  Dem and Repub party boosters lie
about the same; advocacy groups and PACs favor the Republicans.

The results this time yielded a surprise of sorts. So far, Democrats pretty consistently come out higher on the Truth Index than Republicans in almost all categories. In the case of advocacy groups and PACs, however, the Republican advocacy groups and PACs scored higher in overall “truthiness”, although collectively both parties averaged on the negative side of the Truth Index. The difference was pretty substantial with the advocacy groups, with the Republican Truth Index (-12) less than half that of the Democrats (-27.3). The Republican PACs were about two-thirds more truthful at a negative 17.6 compared the Democrats negative 29.2.

If I accidentally included advocacy groups with PACs or vice versa, in certain respects, it doesn’t make much difference. The number of errors would not amount to much, and the results would still favor the Republicans. But more than that, one of Steve’s charts, similar to mine done earlier in the year, I believe reflecting a database of about six months of data, reflects the same pattern with party boosters and advocacy groups.



Click to enlarge: At Steve's Quibbling Potatoes, party boosters and advocacy groups score similarly to mine. 



Next up, another surprise with the “locals.”

Truth Index: 2011 Overall, and Monthly Trends

PolitiFact published 1,919 Truth-o-Meter rulings in 2011.  It would have been 1,920 if not for a duplicate.  As with the previous ALL rulings through the end of 2011, here is the year 2011 in its "cool" and 3-D PolitiFact app format, in a way PolitiFact won't show it: of the 1,919 statements, 1,080 (56.3%--compared to 52.6% overall) were by Republicans/ Conservatives/Tea Party/Libertarians; 677 (35.3%--compared to 39.6% overall) were by Democrats/Liberals, and 162 (8.4%) were by independents, non-partisan or unknown political affiliation. These statements include all those made by individual politicians, as well as pundits, advocates, media, groups, websites, PACs, blogs and chain e-mails.

The Truth Index is shown in parentheses:  the Democrats ended at almost exactly zero with .07, or Half True, while the Republicans were (still) at a negative 23. 

Click to enlarge:  Both parties' Truth Index stayed pretty steady while "unaffiliateds" improved a bit.

It seemed to me that a lot more rulings were being done on Republicans toward the end of the year, with the debates and the upcoming primaries/caucuses.  This was indeed especially the case in December.  In fact, it almost looked like the word went down to the PolitiFact writers to keep the number of Democrat statements selected (selection bias? lol) to between 55 and 60 a month, and the Republicans to 80 or more, because for the most part that's how many would be done.  In December, however, a huge divergence occurred as can be seen in this month to month chart of the percentage of Democratic statements checked as compared to the percentage of Republican statements checked:  in numbers, there were 33 Democrat statements fact-checked as compared to 91 fact-checks for the Republicans in December, an almost 3 to 1 ratio.

Click to enlarge:  Republicans consistently had more claims fact-checked in 2011 with a big bounce up in December.

Here is how the Truth Index fared month to month in 2011:  this graphs the Truth Index calculated for all claims in each month by party.  Interestingly, while more Republican claims were being fact-checked, both the Democrats and Republicans enjoyed a late-year upswing in their "truthiness."  I've also highlighted where the index lines almost met, in February and June, in what appeared to be the Democrats obviously getting more Mostly False/False/Pants on Fire rulings.  Nevertheless, the Democrats appear to consistently have higher ongoing Truth Indexes than the Republicans.

Click to enlarge: One of these days, the lines might cross!

Next up, a look at the "who" (Truth Indexes between office holders, non-office holders, media, etc.).  In the fourth quarter I started a "PAC" designation, so please be patient while I go back to properly record the PACs for the first nine months.  In the meantime...

Tchotchkes: It's NOT Debt Negotiation

Tchotchkes: Evidence Many Boomers are losing their Hearing

Tchotchkes: Mid-terms under the Mistletoe

Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Part Four

Data Analysis by News Source (State)

When compiling the data for this Politi-Score analysis through PolitiFact, I found that the “national” rulings page did not include those of the states. Therefore I had to go through each of the states’ rulings as well (which took a while!). I decided to include state affiliation in the data compilation because I wondered what the “political leanings” (and its affect on the rulings) of these other newspapers were as compared to the St. Petersburg Times, which is often accused of liberal bias by its detractors on the Facebook page.

To get a feel on their political leanings, I looked at who they recently endorsed politically, particularly for president in the last two election cycles. The following table shows the results: some blue (Democrat), one red (Republican), and some mixed (purple).

Location	Newpaper(s)	Endorsements
National	St. Petersburg Times	Obama (08); Kerry (04)
Florida	St. Petersburg Times/Miami Herald	Obama (08); Kerry (04); Miami Herald endorsed Marco Rubio (R) for Senate & Sink (D) for Gov. (10)
Georgia	Atlanta Journal-Constitution	Obama (08); Kerry (04)
Ohio	Cleveland Plain Dealer	Obama (08); no one endorsed 2004; Kasich (R ) for Gov. (10)
Oregon	The Oregonian	Obama (08); Kerry (04)
Rhode Island	Providence Journal	Obama (08); Bush (04)
Texas	Austin American-Statesman	Obama (08); Bush (04)
Virginia	Richmond Times Dispatch	McCain (08); Bush (04)
Wisconsin	Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel	Obama (08); no one endorsed 2004; Walker (R ) for gov. and Feingold (D) for Senate (10)

Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Part Three

Data Analysis excluding Organizations, Blogs and Chain e-Mails

In this analysis, the lower overall ratings of organizations, bloggers and chain e-mails were removed from the Politi-Score averages to see what effect it would have between Republicans and Democrats. When PolitiFact made a Facebook request early in the election season for more liberal chain e-mails from its fan base, I thought perhaps there were a lot more right-wing e-mails, and that this might weigh the averages down for the Republicans thereby favoring the Democrats , since the blogs, etc., have already been found to be, on average, less truthful than the candidates themselves. But as noted in the previous analysis, the patterns were comparable, and although there were more right or Republican rulings, they weren’t enough in number, not too unfairly balanced with the Democrats (43 Republican versus 34 Democrat rulings), and their pants weren’t on fire enough, so to speak, to move the Politi-Score up substantially for the Republicans. In fact, the effect was almost nil, overall raising the "truthiness" scores for each party roughly five percent, using the wide measure. It was a miniscule under-one-percent using my previous grading scale.

Note:  There were twenty additional rulings which could not be identified with either party.  They were included in the total average (#Rulings and Overall columns) but are not broken down.

So far, similar pattern. Looking at the news sources (PolitiFact states) might yield more results worthy of note. That’s next. 

Politi-Score: Elections 2010 Part One

Data Averages Overall

PolitiFact (PF) recently published its own evaluation of the recent mid-term election campaign, calling it, in Truth-o-Meter terms, a "Barely True."  So, was it?

Well, a bit of time was spent was going through the ratings one by one from September 1 through November 1 (the day before the election) to see if I could validate Bill Adair's calculations.  My numbers came out a bit different than his.  Since he published his evaluation on October 27, I probably counted additional rulings that slightly changed the percentages that he calculated.  I counted 414 rulings in total.  This was a bit different from the way I had initially surveyed, which was by selecting only those individuals who had over five (5) rulings by going through the list as shown under PF's "People" tab.  This time it was a total cross section of two months of all rulings, including organizations, bloggers and chain e-mails.

The result was an agreement with PolitiFact on "Barely True" in total.  But further dissection of the numbers to divide them between Democrats and Republicans revealed who was, as judged by PolitiFact, more than Barely True.